all." This is no
exaggeration. Hamlet was by far the greatest part that he had ever
played, or was ever to play. If he had failed--but why pursue it? He
could not fail.

Yet the success on the first night at the Lyceum in 1874 was not of that
electrical, almost hysterical splendor which has greeted the momentous
achievements of some actors. The first two acts were received with
indifference. The people could not see how packed they were with superb
acting--perhaps because the new Hamlet was so simple, so quiet, so free
from the exhibition of actors' artifices which used to bring down the
house in "Louis XI" and in "Richelieu," but which were really the _easy_
things in acting, and in "Richelieu" (in my opinion) not especially well
done. In "Hamlet" Henry Irving did not go to the audience. He made them
come to him. Slowly but surely attention gave place to admiration,
admiration to enthusiasm, enthusiasm to triumphant acclaim.

I have seen many Hamlets--Fechter, Charles Kean, Rossi, Frederick Haas,
Forbes-Robertson, and my own son, Gordon Craig, among them, but they
were not in the same hemisphere! I refuse to go and see Hamlets now. I
want to keep Henry Irving's fresh and clear in my memory until I die.

When he engaged me to play Ophelia in 1878 he asked me to go down to
Birmingham to see the play, and that night I saw what I shall always
consider the _perfection_ of acting. It had been wonderful in 1874. In
1878 it was far more wonderful. It has been said that when he had the
"advantage" of my Ophelia, his Hamlet "improved." I don't think so. He
was always quite independent of the people with whom he acted.

The Birmingham night he knew I was there. He played--I say it without
vanity--for me. We players are not above that weakness, if it be a
weakness. If ever anything inspires us to do our best it is the presence
in the audience of some fellow-artist who must in the nature of things
know more completely than any one what we intend, what we do, what we
feel. The response from such a member of the audience flies across the
footlights to us like a flame. I felt it once when I played Olivia
before Eleonora Duse. I felt that she felt it once when she played
Marguerite Gauthier for me.

When I read "Hamlet" now, everything that Henry did in it seems to me
more absolutely right, even than I thought at the time. I would give
much to be able to record it all in detail--but it may be my
fault--writing is not the medium in